News from March 2013

To find the cradle of Russia’s coming oil revolution, look no further than “Red Lenin”. This is the name of the oilfield in West Siberia that is at the cutting edge of efforts to harness Russia’s vast reserves of unconventional crude, and engineer the same kind of shale boom that has changed the face of […]

This post began as a view on the developments in Cyprus and I am grateful to Gail for the suggestion. It is my fault that it morphed a little from that original simple objective. One problem in marketing natural gas is that there is so much of it coming onto the market that this makes […]

For the first time since 1995, the U.S. will likely produce more oil than it imports. That’s great for the country’s trade balance, but the benefits of all that cheap domestic crude still haven’t shown up at the one place it matters most: the gas station. Even as fuel consumption has fallen to 16 percent […]

An ExxonMobil pipeline rupture near Little Rock, Ark., Friday evening has resulted in a “major oil spill,” according to the Environmental Protection Agency — and ignited further debate over the transportation of crude oil in the U.S. Up to 10,000 barrels sprang from the pipeline, according to an incident report filed to the National Response […]

Current U.S. energy policy is, in fact, a hodgepodge of disconnected policies designed for specific constituencies with no coherent goal. The country has subsidies for fossil fuels, subsidies for nuclear power, subsidies for wind and solar, and subsidies for insulating and retrofitting buildings. We also have energy standards for some appliances and miles per gallon […]

As an enthusiastic proponent of fracking, Gene sent me a link to this NBC article Power shift: Energy boom dawning in America that argues, among other things, that due to fracking, the U.S. will leapfrog Saudi Arabia and Russia to become the #1 fossil fuel producer by 2020. Already today, we see amazingly dropping prices […]

A fuel shortage has helped send food prices soaring. Electricity is blacking out even before the summer. And gas-line gunfights have killed at least five people and wounded dozens over the past two weeks. The root of the crisis, economists say, is that Egypt is running out of the hard currency it needs for fuel […]

The Ratio of the Energy Returned divided by the Energy Invested in producing electricity. The Green bars are global estimates and the purple bars apply to the US. There is considerable uncertainty in all the numbers. How should we decide on the mix of technologies to use to generate electricity? There are pros and cons […]

It wasn’t that long ago that peak oil was on everybody’s minds. The basic scenario: Global energy demand would soon outstrip the world’s oil supply. Some of the more feverish types believe this will lead to a civilizational breakdown and a post-apocalyptic Mad Max landscape. Peak oil anxieties first penetrated mainstream media in the mid-2000s, […]

When I first heard about the Cyprus ritual execution bailout, I had thought that the widespread predictions that the island nation’s economy would contract by 20% to 30% over the next two years were off base. I thought it would happen much faster, on the order of two to three months. An estimated 45% (mind […]

North Korea said on Saturday it was entering a “state of war” with South Korea, its latest bout of angry rhetoric directed at Seoul and Washington, but the South brushed off the statement as little more than tough talk. The North also threatened to shut down an industrial zone it operates jointly with the South […]

On March 4, David Frum, a former special assistant to President George W. Bush, published an article on CNN.com titled “Peak Oil doomsayers proved wrong” in which he not only claimed there was no danger of a shortage of oil, but also that “our oil problem is that we’re producing so much of the stuff […]

The US Environmental Protection Agency has proposed new standards to cut pollution from road fuel that have been strongly opposed by the oil industry but backed by carmakers. The new rules to reduce the sulphur content of petrol, known as Tier 3, are intended to cut cars’ emissions of pollutants that create smog and cause […]

The U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq will cost taxpayers $4 trillion to $6 trillion, taking into account the medical care of wounded veterans and expensive repairs to a force depleted by more than a decade of fighting, according to a new study by a Harvard researcher. Washington increased military benefits in late 2001 as […]

Ten years after the invasion of Baghdad, major American oil companies are staying away from investing in Iraq’s oil resources, McClatchy’s Sean Cockerham reports. Instead, many of Iraq’s newest oil fields are now controlled by Chinese. Iraq possesses the second-largest oil deposit in the world, in the West Qurna region. Forbes says the country could […]

The largest recorded earthquake in Oklahoma history was likely triggered by the injection of wastewater from oil production into wells deep beneath the earth, according to a study published Tuesday in the scientific journal Geology. The magnitude 5.7 earthquake, which struck in 2011 near Prague in central Oklahoma, is the largest and most […]

Completing my catch-up on oil production for the three most important Middle Eastern producers, here is Iraq. Iraq had a substantial gain in 2012 – around half a million barrels per day – backslid a little in December, and then has apparently started to regain in February. I expect further production gains in 2013, and, […]

The pain at the gas pump that you’ve been feeling may not hurt as much the rest of the year. After surging nearly 60 cents a gallon from late December to a recent peak of $3.79 on Feb. 27, prices have fallen for 25 of the past 29 days. Nationally, regular grade gas averages $3.65 […]

Corn supplies in the U.S., the biggest grower, are shrinking at the fastest pace in almost four decades as improving demand from ethanol refiners drains reserves already diminished by drought. Stockpiles probably fell 38 percent in three months to 4.995 billion bushels (126.9 million metric tons) by March 1, the biggest drop since 1975, according […]

The Eco-Sense House is alive! From dream (see episode 103) to reality. Its curving cob walls embrace Ann and Gord Baird’s three-generation family. A living roof offers summer cooling and filters winter rains stored for garden water. The composting toilet provides rich soil for the veggie gardens, which supply much of the family’s food. This […]

Since 1998 when the oil geologists Colin Campbell and Jean Laherrère published a widely discussed survey article “The End of Cheap Oil” in the journal “Scientific American”, the concept of peak oil and the present state of oil depletion are part of any serious analysis of thefuture oil supply potential. However, recently various publications suggest […]

David Zeiler writes: Today (Wednesday) an analyst from Citigroup became the latest lemming to declare the death of peak oil. In a report entitled “The End is Nigh,” Seth Kleinman says a combination of flattening demand and rising supply will cause oil prices to slide slightly by the end of the decade to $80-$90 a […]

James Altucher is the editor of the widely read letter, The Altucher Confidential. Porter and James have a lively conversation about the peak oil fallacy and whether or not parents should send their children to college. Plus, James provides his analysis on where he sees investment opportunities and even provides a few specific stock recommendations. […]

Due to unseasonably cold weather the UK has seen high demand for natural gas, far higher than anything expected, and the truth is that the country was not prepared. The dwindling supplies form the North Sea were unable to meet the high demand, and storage reserves reached dangerously low levels, leading some to suggest that […]

Every day a government agency or industry group in North America still hails natural gas mined from deep shale rock formations as “the bridging fuel” that will power a brighter if not cleaner energy tomorrow. Cheap natural gas, goes the mantra, will solve our energy woes and build a new energy foundation. The government of […]

Over the nearly seven years I’ve spent blogging on The Archdruid Report, the themes of my weekly posts have veered back and forth between pragmatic ways to deal with the crisis of our time and the landscape of ideas that give those steps their meaning. That’s been unavoidable, since what I’ve been trying to communicate […]

Yesterday, Citi commodities analysts Seth Kleinman and Ed Morse declared that “the end was nigh” for oil demand. They’re not alone. Last month, the BNY Mellon‘s asset management subsidiary, the Boston Company, published a paper called “End of an Era: The Death of Peak Oil.” AOL Energy’s Peter Gardett pointed us to it. In brief, […]

Ten years after the United States invaded and occupied Iraq, the country’s oil industry is poised to boom and make the troubled nation the No.2 oil exporter in the world. But the nation that’s moving to take advantage of Iraq’s riches isn’t the United States. It’s China. America, with its own homegrown energy bonanza, isn’t […]

China and Brazil agreed to trade in each other’s currencies just hours ahead of the BRICS summit in South Africa. The deal, which extends over a three-year period and amounts to an exchange of about $30 billion in trade per year, marks the latest effort among two of the world’s largest emerging economies to shift […]

An observation worth noting … and pondering, from William James more than a century ago: The most significant characteristic of modern civilization is the sacrifice of the future for the present, and all the power of science has been prostituted to this purpose. We’re spending countless hundreds of billions of dollars each year to extract […]

Saudi Arabia …
- taking Saudi Armco public
- while pushing @Tesla to go private
… to me is a clear sign that the “#PeakOil shit” is starting to hit the fan
Buckle up. The next 10 years will be a bumpy ride.